Last year the University of St. Thomas joined the Free Project, a growing network of 22 colleges and universities that have banded together to fight modern slavery worldwide.

St. Thomas history professor David Williard, Ph.D., saw St. Thomas as a perfect fit to undertake the aims of the international organization’s mission. But he, along with the early members of St. Thomas’ chapter, have big, far-reaching dreams for the project – so big that even the national Free Project organizers called their objectives “pretty ambitious.”

“I thought that we could do this in a way that not every university really could,” Williard said. “Most chapters are more like a student club that do one event per semester that’s sponsored by the university. While that’s worthwhile, I am very invested in Free Project being deeply integrated into the unique context of St. Thomas.”

Williard’s aim is for Free Project to touch on all aspects of university life at St. Thomas in coming years – not only bringing light to the “unspoken problem of slavery in the 21st century” but also spurring a sort of zeitgeist across the university in which students initiate their own independent passion projects that raise consciousness for the ways slavery manifests itself in today’s world.

He believes the Free Project will be an instrumental channel for bringing faculty and students from diverse disciplines together for intellectual collaboration and social advocacy.

“Part of this is an appeal to our students that they not be passive,” Williard said. “A university is valuable because our students contribute to that value by embracing it, by making decisions about what’s important to them and what their investment in those problems will be … at least raising consciousness among their peers and communities.”

The St. Thomas chapter will do some programming, but Williard emphasized that the chapter’s main aim is driven by faculty and student research interests.

This means hosting events and discussions when a particular topic or theme arises in the campus community, such as last November’s “Is Slavery Dead?” panel – the project’s official launch event – that members of the project organized.

The panel brought together four St. Thomas faculty and a St. Thomas student, sophomore and co-president of the History Club Whitney Oachs. Oachs presented her research on how the Western world’s desire for fast fashion contributes to the debt bondage and enslavement of women working in the fashion industry in developing countries in Southeast Asia. Other topics presented included sex slavery in Thailand and the downfall of a small Missouri town founded and populated by the grandchildren of former slaves, among other topics.

This year Oachs hopes to connect her research under a Young Scholars Grant with the Free Project’s mission. Her work focuses on the displacement of communities of color in Minneapolis and St. Paul with the construction of I-94, and her belief that the politics of “root shock” here and across America are embedded deeply in the legacy of slavery, rights and citizenship in America.

“The Free Project at St. Thomas has challenged me in ways I never thought possible, and my involvement in the organization has broadened my scope on what history means, and what my history education can do to better our contemporary world,” she said. “It has given me a way to talk about social injustices with a historical context, and inspires me every day to push for positive change both locally and globally.”

This year Williard also is collaborating with Kim Vrudny, Ph.D., of St. Thomas’ Theology Department to create a regular system of engagement courses that would allow students to work with local organizations, like those that address human trafficking. The courses will provide students another way of compiling a meaningful portfolio that represents their interests, what he called “a clear set of accomplishments toward a problem they are deeply invested in, so when they think about post-graduate opportunities they’ll have some direction.”

Another Free Project endeavor Williard hopes to launch soon is a website that would serve as a “clearinghouse” where faculty and students could search for others with similar research interests to collaborate on academic projects and where students can find a mentor.

“In a perfect world, I’d like to see students have dreams and these questions burning in their souls,” Williard said. “In many cases they just need to be given the encouragement to say, ‘I’m going to put my voice out there.'”

This entry was curated by Kanishka Chowdhury, professor of English and director of the American culture and difference minor.

Some notion of human rights can be traced as far back as the Hammurabi Code in ancient Mesopotamia (1750 B.C.), through early Buddhist, Judeo-Christian, Islamic and other religious traditions, Greco-Roman ideas of jus gentium, theories of natural laws in the Western tradition, and the documents of the French and American revolutions.

However, modern notions of human rights emerge with the drafting of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. More specifically, our contemporary understanding of human rights as a form of international humanitarianism, and a system of retribution and justice that addresses a catalog of crimes and a range of violations, has an even more recent provenance, gaining precedence, according to critic Samuel Moyn, only in the late 1970s.

Thus, while there are many pivotal texts that deal with human rights across the centuries, from Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791) and Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792) to Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951), I will limit myself in the following selection to Moyn’s periodization of rights, and merely list a selection of the most significant texts written in the last 45 years. Additionally, I will include only books that I have taught.

10. Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love (2010)

In this gripping and evocative novel focusing on the 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone (1991-2002) and its aftermath, Forna addresses one of the crucial elements of post-conflict societies: how survivors confront the trauma and memories of war while considering the possibility, or impossibility, of a just reconciliation.

9. Mahmood Mamdani, Saviors and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror (2010)

Mamdani offers a refreshingly original and historically informed account of the Darfur crisis, placing it within the larger politics of the war on terror and removing it from the media glare that turned the conflict into a celebrity cause.

8. Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Color Blindness (2012)

Alexander’s book is a devastating account of the prison industrial complex in the present-day United States, highlighting the intricate connections between profit acquisition, structural racism and political expediency.

7. Óscar Martínez, The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging the Narcos on the Migrant Trail (2010, 2014)

Martínez chronicles the astounding courage of migrants from Central America as they ride the train, known as La Bestia, through Mexico, dodging gangs and kidnappers, in their attempts to reach the border of the United States.

6. Mourid Barghouti, I Saw Ramallah (1997, 2000)

A memoir that chronicles the Palestinian poet’s return to his homeland for the first time after the 1967 war. Barghouti combines poetic images with poignant meditations on the nature of home and exile to bring to light a complex struggle for nationhood.

5. Audre Lorde, Sister, Outsider (1984)

Lorde’s portrait of the intersectional lives of those on the margins, a razor-sharp critique of heterosexist, patriarchal systems of power, remains amazingly timely 30 years later in a society driven by racist violence and myriad forms of misogyny.

4. Indra Sinha, Animal’s People: A Novel (2007)

Told from the perspective of a victim of the 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India, Sinha’s novel is funny, outrageous and relentlessly accurate in demonstrating how it is almost always the most vulnerable who pay the price for environmental disasters.

Menchú’s account of the military’s crackdown on the indigenous peoples of Guatemala is probably the best known text to emerge from that particular struggle. However, Menchú also shines a light on the struggle for the rights of Indian peasants, highlighting a resistance movement that has existed in some shape or form over centuries.

Klein is ruthlessly incisive in her analysis of the contradictions of capitalism, a system that seemingly attempts to address the dangers of climate change even while adhering blindly to the goals of infinite expansion and exploitation of the planet’s resources.

1. Paolo Friere, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1968)

This book predates my own timeline for inclusion, but I’m making an exception for it because it remains so influential and relevant. Friere critiques the “banking model” of education and offers a stirring account of the ways in which oppressed people take part in their own liberation through the collective growth of critical consciousness or conscientização. Although written within a Brazilian context, this text has become central to the struggles of colonized peoples across the world.

Stories of the Storytellers is a periodic series from the Newsroom featuring some of St. Thomas’ prominent storytellers who have introduced us to many of the interesting people, places and events of St. Thomas history.

A St. Paul native, St. Thomas Director of Media Relations Jim Winterer has been a Tommie since 1968, graduating in 1971 before working as a newspaper reporter, editor and publisher in northern Minnesota. He returned to St. Thomas in 1980 as the director of the then-News Service where, among many things, he helped oversee the consolidation of faculty and student news into the former weekly newsletter, The Bulletin. Now, Winterer works to connect and promote St. Thomas’ faculty to media outlets the world over, leveraging his lifelong passion as a storyteller to continue making sure people know about St. Thomas.

The Newsroom sat down with Winterer to talk with him about his role of more than three decades as one of St. Thomas’ most prominent storytellers.

On growing up telling stories: We didn’t talk about it like it was telling stories [growing up as a kid]. But then I realized even when I was at the newspaper in Two Harbors [in the 1970s]: I’m telling stories. Right around that time Garrison Keillor was getting going and he was telling stories about Lake Wobegon, and I felt like I was telling stories about Two Harbors and Silver Bay and these people that live up in the woods. Mine were real, and his were real but not real people. I thought, ‘What a responsibility.’ I would write three, four obit[uarie]s in a week and it’s like, ‘Wow, I’m telling their stories. Their last stories.’ And a lot of these were these Finnish loggers, real characters. That was interesting. …

In fifth or sixth grade, we grew up in this magical time and place in St. Paul where every third house had eight kids and we all went to the same school. We were free-range kids and just had so many adventures and fun stuff. A whole neighborhood of characters. … We told a lot of stories. When we heard those Garrison Keillor stories I thought, ‘Dang, I could get up there and tell our stories.’ We had a ton of them. … It was remarkably similar. We just thought it was so fun. It was intellectually fun; we would rather do that than sit and watch TV. We were creating our own shows in our heads. It was an important part of learning how to tell stories. We weren’t trying; it was just fun when you’d think of something and start telling a story. You needed the audience like we had. It was so fun.

On learning to tell a story to himself as part of a writing process: Sometimes you just tell the story to yourself and you need quiet time to do it. I like long hikes where you can get into a rhythm … there’s a pace where your brain works well and if I’m stuck on a story that will help me. … I used to swim a lot until they closed the McCarthy gym pool … and did a lot of thinking while I was swimming. One time I was working on a story about Father [Jan Michael] Joncas when he had Guillain-Barre syndrome and almost died, but they kept him alive while he went paralyzed and came back from it. It would get to the point where you couldn’t move anything but your eyes and had to communicate by blinking. Eventually even that would go. I was trying so hard to think of a headline and just couldn’t think of it. I remember swimming and going to touch the wall to turn and it was like, ‘Ah, that’s it!’ And it was, ‘When Thoughts Are All You Have Left.’ It just fit it so well. Sometimes you have to tell yourself those stories and give yourself permission to do it, especially if you’re trying to fit a lot of pieces together to tell it. You need those self-stories to figure it out.

On shifting his storytelling with his current role in news service: I still like to tell stories. I don’t write feature stories as much anymore; that’s what I used to really like writing. You can’t be as much of a storyteller with news releases, but years of practicing how to tell stories makes you better at news releases. What are you trying to tell them? And then tell them right away. The first two sentences. That doesn’t always work in a pure feature story, but it does in a news release. You can’t make busy editors look at your headline and sub-head and wonder what your story’s about.

On the importance of documenting St. Thomas’ history throughout his years here: We took it very seriously [when we were publishing The Bulletin] that we were writing the history as we went; I really thought about that a lot. Ann Kenne at the archives came up with a way to scan all the printed Bulletins, the [St. Thomas] magazines before they went online; it’s very easy to go into the archives and search for stuff, find it and print it. What an amazing thing. All that history through that age of growth [in the 1980s-90s] we had is right in those printed materials. We can also find online now in the Newsroom with searches. You’ve got it all covered.

On the lessons of hitchhiking: Another place where I learned about storytelling is that I used to hitchhike as a kid in St. Paul. … I started hitchhiking all over the Twin Cities, then eventually going up to Duluth and the North Shore, then all over the country. I don’t know how many hundreds of rides I got. Right away you’re with someone and you start to tell stories. A lot of times I think they picked you up just to tell each other stories. You would take a cue, the weather, where you’re going, if you’re in school. … I have memories of so many of those that are just so great. I always thought doing that was a really good primer for doing interviews as a journalist. I can’t think of a better way to learn than that. There were many times I could have driven but it so much more fun to hitchhike.

On favorite stories he has gotten to tell: I did have fun telling the story about Father Joncas. I really enjoyed the story about John Abraham and his confrontation with Lord [Christopher] Monckton. Really an interesting story there. Some of the stories from the North Shore: I met this old man who built these forest service stations … Just a really cool guy who I got to know. I did another story up there about this beaver who kept building his dam by a busy highway and they kept trying to move him, and he would move back. One day he got run over by a car. Really sad. … It’s hard to think of them after so many years; there are so many of them. I’ll go into my garage [where I store old stories] sometimes and think, ‘Somehow people have paid me to write stuff that I would pay for to read myself. Why would that be the case?’ I try not to think about that question too much. It is still fun just to be working here and doing this.

Today marks the last of my updates of the work of our strategic planning task forces: Integrated Health and Wellness. This group was tasked with the most exploratory work of any of the eight task forces. Their job was to collate all of our campuswide programs related to health care, and to survey the local markets for unmet needs as possible areas for future expansion.

Many of us heard rumors that St. Thomas was going to start a College of Health, and these rumors fed more speculation on what would be included in that college. This was not the main task of this group, however. They did the initial exploration of possible roads we could take to build on our current strengths.

We already have strong graduate programs in the Opus College of Business, Graduate Psychology, as well as Engineering related to the health care field. At the undergraduate level, in addition to the programs in health and human performance, many programs support students who ultimately want to work in health care professions.

The task force mapped out a road forward to raise the visibility of the programs that we currently offer from which we can build for the future. They recommend that St. Thomas build a comprehensive website for both graduate and undergraduate programs related to health and wellness so that prospective students can find these programs more easily. They also recommend enhancing our pre-health advising for our undergraduate students and explore collaboration between our global health and public health programs. They have identified some possible areas for expansion, perhaps in physical and occupational therapy, but recommend a deeper market study before launching new programs.

The task force also recommends that whatever we do should be grounded in our mission and provide a mission-based approach to health and wellness. For example, we might explore a graduate program in bioethics for current practitioners, or perhaps develop an innovative program for those wanting to do pastoral work in hospitals and other health-related systems. They recommend that we focus on serving vulnerable populations, including the aging population.

What does this mean for the immediate future? For one, it means that we will proceed deliberately and reflectively as we enhance our programs related to health and wellness. Will we end up with a college? It is too soon to tell, but now we know what will be our next steps as we seek to keep our programs innovative and mission driven.

Communication and Journalism professor Mark Neuzil has covered and written about the environment – and taught students to do the same – for decades. How do you go about telling the story of a subject that can’t speak for itself? How do you get society at large to understand issues that are often complex and abstract but deeply important?

Neuzil joined the Newsroom to talk about these topics and others in a taped interview, which has been edited for clarity and length.

Former Board of Trustee member Guy Schoenecker ’49, a philanthropist and a great friend to the university, died Tuesday at 89.

Schoenecker endowed the largest scholarship fund at St. Thomas, and as a result hundreds of students have received scholarships over more than two decades. Other contributions led to the construction of the old Schoenecker Arena (1981) and the new Schoenecker Arena (2010), which were named for his parents, on the St. Paul campus and Schoenecker Law Library (2003) in the School of Law on the Minneapolis campus. He was one of the founders of the Minneapolis campus, and a fresco portrait of him and his wife, Barbara, hangs in the atrium of Terrence Murphy Hall. He also supported programs in the Center for Catholic Studies and the installation of artificial turf on the south field.

“Guy was one of our most distinguished alumni,” President Julie Sullivan said. “He believed passionately in the value of a St. Thomas education because of his experiences here as a student, and he wanted to see others get the same opportunity that he had as a young man. He was a wise and thoughtful trustee, giving unselfishly of his time and providing invaluable advice as St. Thomas evolved from a men’s liberal arts college into a comprehensive university. We will miss him dearly. I am comforted to know that his legacy of active participation, astute questions and wise counsel will continue at St. Thomas through his daughter, Lisa’s, ongoing role as a member of our Board of Trustees.”

Schoenecker served on the St. Thomas Board of Trustees for 30 years (1978 to 2008), and today his daughter, Lisa Schoenecker Anderson, is a trustee. He was also a founding member of the School of Law’s Board of Governors in 2001 and served for 35 years on the board of the Catholic Digest, a monthly magazine that St. Thomas sold in 2002.

Savvy businessman

Schoenecker was the founding chairman of what now is called BI Worldwide – formerly known as Business Incentives – an Edina-based company that has 25 sales offices on five continents.

He acquired his business acumen in Eden Valley, a town of 800 people 70 miles west of the Twin Cities. His family owned a hardware and furniture store and three funeral homes, and he began helping his father in the funeral business at the age of 15. Working in the family business was his first lesson in the importance of serving customers: “In a small town, where everyone knows everyone, customer satisfaction is crucial,” he told St. Thomas magazine.

As a St. Thomas undergraduate studying philosophy and political science, Schoenecker sold diamond engagement rings to veterans returning to the St. Thomas campus after World War II. But as he prepared to graduate from St. Thomas, he did not know what his future would hold, and he once recalled sitting in the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas one rainy day praying for direction.

“At that point,” he said, “I committed my future career to God. ‘Lord,’ I said, ‘I don’t pick up on subtlety too well. When you want me to make a change, give me a clear sign.’ In retrospect, that’s what’s happened in my life.”

He read those signs, and they led to success. He founded Business Builders, which sold merchandise to businesses to use as incentive awards. His jewelry and furniture stores evolved into a consumer loyalty business in the 1950s, with frequent customers of supermarkets and gas stations earning dishes, pots and pans. In 1970, Schoenecker changed the name of his company from Business Builders to Business Incentives.

The importance of tithing

Schoenecker built the concept of tithing into BI’s budgeting process. In a St. Thomas magazine interview in 2000 he said his desire to tithe to St. Thomas stemmed from the many benefits he received as a student and the greatest gift he ever received – the love of his family.

“My family was extremely important to my image of myself and my security,” he said. “With parents and two sets of grandparents around, I always knew I was loved. That’s a tremendous gift that a lot of young kids don’t have today.”

“Guy was one of the most conscientious people I have known in my life,” said Father Dennis Dease, president of St. Thomas from 1991-2013. “He got his start here at St. Thomas and he got his inspiration here, and he wanted to make a St. Thomas education possible for future generations. He was a lovely man who cared deeply for those around him.”

St. Thomas conferred a Doctor of Laws degree on Schoenecker in 2000, commending him for his insightfulness and leadership: “Throughout your life, you have insisted on setting – and achieving – the highest standards,” the degree citation said. “You have been an important guide in St. Thomas’ own journey to quality, and we are grateful for your quiet steadfast counsel as we have grown from the small liberal arts college that you attended into the comprehensive regional university that has educated five of your children.”

He was recognized with accolades many times over the years. In addition to the Doctor of Laws degree, he received a St. Thomas Aquinas Medallion from the School of Law in 2009, the Distinguished Alumnus Award in 1993 and the John F. Cade Award for entrepreneurship achievement in 1991. Twin Cities Business magazine named him to the Minnesota Business Hall of Fame in 2008, and he received a Leading With Faith Award from the Catholic Spirit in 2002.

One of Guy’s sons, Larry Schoenecker, president of BI, said in 2000 that his dad taught him that “the harder you work, the luckier you get. The people who work the hardest win. That’s been the key to my father’s – and our company’s – success.”

The younger Schoenecker also said he admired his father’s belief in treating customers and employees well and empowering employees to resolve issues on their own and rewarding them for doing so.

Schoenecker is survived by his wife, Barbara; seven children; and nine grandchildren.

Visitation will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 28, at Pax Christi Catholic Church, 12100 Pioneer Trail, Eden Prairie, and one hour before a Mass of Christian Burial at 1 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 29, at the church.

Please remember in your prayers Stanley Zarambo, who died Wednesday, Nov. 16. He was the father of Susan Zarambo, School of Engineering staff member.

A Mass of Christian burial took place Monday, Nov. 21, at 10:30 a.m. at St. Joseph of the Lakes Catholic Church in Lino Lakes. Memorials preferred to Holy Trinity Lithuanian Catholic Church in Hartford, Connecticut, or a charity of your choice.

Appointments are available for University of St. Thomas President Julie Sullivan’s December office hours on St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses. To schedule a 15-minute appointment with the president, please call Karen Hennes, (651) 962-6500.

In November, the president’s office hours will be from 2 to 4 p.m. on:

Tuesday, Dec. 13, Room 100, Aquinas Hall

Thursday, Dec. 15, in Room 289, Terrence Murphy Hall

All office hours dates this semester are posted on the president’s page of the St. Thomas website.

Globalization always has been a major part of the strategic plan. It is one of the original five themes and became a strategic priority as we worked toward implementation.

St. Thomas always has had a global focus. We have a vibrant study abroad program. We have provided space for an ESL program on our campus, and we have benefited by the Saudi Arabian government sponsorship of students studying engineering and computer science. President Emeritus Father Dennis Dease even had a program to support students from Uganda.

So, why create a task force, if we already have these programs? The answer is complex. First, the world of global engagement in higher education is changing, and we need to keep up with these changes in order to continue to recruit domestic students who are interested in global education as well as international students who may want to study here. Second, we realized that our organizational structure did not support the kind of collaboration that would take us to the next level. Third, we want to diversify opportunities for our students to become globally agile.

The implementation of the task force recommendations is underway, even though they may not be as obvious as some of the other strategic priorities. Just last week, Provost Richard Plumb announced a re-organization of his unit, which includes the creation of a Center for Global Learning. The announcement states: “The Center for Global Learning, headed by a senior international officer (SIO), will oversee the Office of International Students and Scholars, the Office of Study Abroad and international recruiting. The SIO will be responsible for coordinating the university’s international activities and expanding its global connections.” The task force, along with the work of Dr. Camille George and the Center for Global and Local Engagement, has paved the way for this center.

Some of the programs related to this priority are currently underway. Perhaps the most obvious one is the CORE semester in Rome. This is a semester-long program at our Bernardi Campus in Rome that offers four core courses abroad. It addresses our goal to have more undergraduate students study abroad for a semester or longer.

We will pilot a new program this summer called Global Summers. The program will provide students work and internship experiences outside of the United States. We also are working on identifying global partners for more sustained and richer interactions in key locations across the globe. These partnerships would support faculty exchanges as well as collaborative research.

Global connections are made not only off campus but on campus as well. For our own international students, Student Affairs is creating a Living Learning Community that will mix sophomore (and above) domestic and international students. And the Selim Center for Learning in Later Years is working on implementing Global Learning in Later Life.

This is an exciting time for St. Thomas as we grow programs that we see as central to our mission and expand on that firm base to build a more culturally agile community.

]]>http://www.stthomas.edu/news/global-agility-global-connections-task-force/feed/0University of St. Thomas Opening New Two-Year College in 2017http://www.stthomas.edu/news/dougherty-family-college/ http://www.stthomas.edu/news/dougherty-family-college/#commentsThu, 17 Nov 2016 19:30:15 +0000http://www.stthomas.edu/news/?p=171074

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, only one-third of adults attain a four-year degree, despite the benefits of increased employment and income. To help change this, particularly for those from diverse and economically disadvantaged backgrounds, the University of St. Thomas Board of Trustees today voted to establish a first-of-its-kind two-year college in Minnesota on its Minneapolis campus.

The Dougherty Family College, named after lead benefactors Mike and Kathy Dougherty, is intended to be a first step toward a four-year degree and will provide intensive, wrap-around education services designed to accommodate promising students who may not succeed at existing higher education offerings in the community.

Starting in the fall of 2017, the college will offer students an Associate of Arts degree in liberal arts, with courses that meet Minnesota Transfer Curriculum guidelines, which will allow graduates to have a seamless transition to public as well as private four-year institutions in Minnesota. The college plans to admit about 150 students to its inaugural college class, and St. Thomas is now applying for approval from the Higher Learning Commission to offer the Associate of Arts degree. Upon receiving this approval, the college will begin accepting applications.

The Dougherty Family College is designed to help ensure the success of low-income students who may be the first in their family to attend college, or those who lack the academic support, academic mentors or financial means to pursue a four-year degree.

“We are determined to reduce the educational attainment gap in Minnesota and prepare students to become transformational leaders in our communities, state and nation,” said Julie Sullivan, president of the University of St. Thomas. “It is our mission to develop and be morally responsible leaders, who work to advance the common good, and the inspiration for the Dougherty Family College came from within our school and from our generous, community-minded donors.”

The annual tuition will be offset by state and local grants, scholarships and corporate support, bringing final tuition costs to just $1,000 a year for the most under-resourced students.

To date, the University of St. Thomas has raised $18 million in private donations for the new college, including a founding gift from the family of the college namesakes: Mike and Kathy Dougherty. The college aims to raise additional funds over the next several years to sustain itself.

Mike Dougherty was orphaned at an early age and became a self-described sad and angry young man. He was expelled from Creighton University after one semester and was drafted into the army during the Cuban missile crisis. That experience helped him to turn his life around. St. Thomas agreed to give him a second chance and he completed his degree there. In 1977 he founded his own financial services firm. In 2003 he received the Horatio Alger Association Award in recognition of his success in the face of adversity. Mike and Kathy are active members of the Twin Cities community, and Mike has served as a St. Thomas trustee since 2003.

Sullivan added that the plan for the school is modeled on Arrupe College at Loyola University Chicago, which also offers a two-year degree to a diverse student body from underserved communities.

“This is intended to be a pathway to, and develop the skills that students need to attain, a four-year degree.” Sullivan said. “In the Twin Cities, the median yearly income of adults with a bachelor’s degree is $22,332 more than that of adults with only a high-school diploma. Many capable Twin Cities high school students lack the academic experience or social support necessary to initially succeed in a four-year degree program. The Dougherty Family College is designed to address those deficits and help motivated students overcome other barriers to access, such as family income and high school grades.”

The college will follow a holistic and competitive admissions process. Students will not be required to take the ACT to be admitted, but will need a 2.5 or higher grade point average and must have a high level of financial need (e.g., meeting the eligibility requirements for federal Pell Grants and/or state grants). In addition, students must participate in a qualifying interview to determine their readiness and motivation. Classes will be held four days a week, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Structured and intensive mentoring, a directed curriculum, generous financial aid and small class sizes will help prepare students to succeed in their first two years of college and prepare them to matriculate in a four-year program with minimal student debt. St. Thomas will also connect its two-year college students with paid internships through collaboration with regional employers. “These internships will offer valuable, hands-on work experience that will help our students develop professional and life skills,” said Pat Ryan, Chair of the University of St. Thomas Board of Trustees, and an early advocate for making a connection between the school and the business community.

Students will take a core curriculum of liberal arts classes, which will meet the academic standards of the University of St. Thomas four-year program but will be delivered in a different way. Each student will attend classes with the same group of 25 students throughout the two-year program. They will take a first-year experience seminar focusing on study skills, time management, financial and information literacy, preparatory skills for conducting research and professional development etiquette. In addition, students will participate in leadership development advisory groups to hone their critical thinking and leadership skills.

“A college degree is one of the best ways to beat poverty,” said Dougherty. “My wife, daughters and I want to give motivated, hard-working students the opportunity to succeed in college so they can use their talents and support themselves in the future. One day, I believe these students will be giving back to our community. But for now, this is a way for our family to give back to the community that has been so good to us.”

The St. Thomas Board of Trustees has approved a 10-year St. Paul campus master plan that identifies potential projects supporting the university’s mission and vision, including two new academic buildings, a chapel expansion, more student housing and more parking.

The board discussed the plan during a Physical Facilities Committee meeting on Wednesday and a plenary session on Thursday before giving unanimous approval. The plan was unveiled Sept. 26 and 27 at forums for faculty, staff, students and neighbors.

In approving the plan, the board did not favor any specific projects nor determine a timetable or sequencing for them. The board also emphasized it is not making a commitment that all of the projects will proceed because they will be dependent on fund-raising success and borrowing capacity.

St. Thomas developed the plan over the last 14 months with Hastings + Chivetta of St. Louis. The potential projects include a third science and engineering building on the south campus, an arts building on Summit Avenue west of McNeely Hall, an expansion of the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas, four new residential buildings and additional parking spaces.

President Julie Sullivan told the board that she views the plan as a “land-use plan” as much as a “campus master plan. It is a holistic assessment of our needs so that when we are ready to pursue any one of these projects, the location decision will have been made in the context of all of our needs.”

Jim Gearen, chair of the board’s Physical Facilities Committee, views the plan “as a work in process,” and said the process needs to remain fluid and dynamic.

In his presentation to the board, Chris Chivetta, president of Hastings + Chivetta, said he was pleased the plan would allow St. Thomas to construct another science and engineering building while retaining Loras Hall by moving it 100 feet to the west. Constructed in 1894, Loras is the oldest building on campus and is in the West Summit Avenue Historic District.

Process began 14 months ago

Hastings + Chivetta began its work on the plan in September 2015, analyzing every square foot of space on the St. Paul and Minneapolis campuses. The plan emanates from a strategic planning process that the university began three years ago.

“We quickly realized that we needed more space for our growing engineering and science programs,” Sullivan told the Sept. 27 community forum, and she said it is equally important to provide a new building for our music and art history programs and the creativity and innovation they catalyze across all of our disciplines. “We also want more students living on campus and more parking.”

The university sought input throughout the process from faculty, staff, students, alumni and neighbors. The September community forum was the third for neighbors, more than 80 of whom attended a three-hour workshop last April to suggest how St. Thomas might use open space, where new buildings could be constructed and what buildings might be renovated or demolished.

In developing the plan, St. Thomas chose to preserve most of its existing green space, including the area along Mississippi River Boulevard and Goodrich Avenue. Neighbors had encouraged St. Thomas to preserve that south campus green space, which many consider a community park.

Tuition dollars would not be used to construct new buildings. Fund-raising would occur for the academic buildings, and funds borrowed for housing and parking would be paid off through revenue streams, such as room and parking fees.

The plan can be viewed on large poster boards in the foyer of O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library in St. Paul and in Keffer Library in Opus Hall on the Minneapolis campus. Here are highlights of the plan:

10. Relocation of Loras Hall. The building (38,580 square feet) would be moved 100 feet to the west and renovated, allowing a larger footprint for a new science and engineering building; 11. New science and engineering building. 137,000 square feet; 12. New South Campus boilers. In basement of Facilities and Design Center; 13. Anderson Parking Facility addition. 300 parking spaces on two additional levels; 14. Brady Education Center renovation. 40,000 square feet.

Academic and administrative space

A third building would be constructed as part of the Frey Science and Engineering Center and would be located on Lot M, west of O’Shaughnessy Science Hall, and on the site of Loras. Moving Loras would provide a larger footprint for the new building and allow St. Thomas to renovate the building, strengthen its foundation and add a new heating and cooling system under the hall.

The arts building would be located on Summit Avenue between McNeely Hall and Finn Street. The building would require the demolition of the Summit Avenue Classroom Building, a duplex used for undergraduate housing, and the 30 and 32 Finn buildings, which are used for institutional advancement staff.

St. Thomas has not done any planning for the two new academic buildings, nor has it raised any funds for them.

Other building projects include a small addition to the Chapel of St. Thomas Aquinas; conversion of residential space to administrative space in Murray-Herrick Campus Center; conversion of the 2171-2175 Grand apartments for administrative space; new south campus boilers and renovation of Brady Education Center.

6. New arts building. East block, facing Summit: 65,000 new square feet and 290 underground parking spaces (including 120 below two new Grand Avenue residences). Would replace the Summit Avenue Classroom Building, the 2110 Summit duplex and the office buildings at 30 Finn and 32 Finn; 7. New Grand apartment residences with first-floor retail space. East block: 112 beds on four floors and 13,000 square feet of retail on ground floor; 8. New Grand apartment residence. East block: 140 beds on five floors; 9. 2171-2175 Grand renovation. West block: 18,000 square feet now used for 34 residence hall beds would be renovated for administrative use.

Housing

The plan identifies four new residential buildings and the renovation of Ireland Residence Hall. The projects would add 441 beds, or 17 percent, to the existing housing stock of 2,630 beds.

The new residence halls (416 and 256 beds) on the north campus would replace John Paul II Residence Hall (141 beds) and the Faculty Residence near Cleveland.

In addition, two apartment buildings would be constructed on Grand, one with 112 beds and the other with 140. The only two buildings on that block today – an apartment building at 2085 Grand and a house at 2109 Grand – would be demolished.

A special feature on that block could be up to 13,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor of the apartment building closest to Cleveland. Neighbors have encouraged St. Thomas to include retail space in the building. No decisions have been made on what kinds of shops or restaurants might be in the building, and St. Thomas has committed to conduct a neighborhood and campus survey.

The university’s parking inventory would increase by 626 spaces (24 percent) if all of the projects identified in the plan are constructed.

More than half of the parking would be under five new buildings: the residence hall on the John Paul II site (70 spaces), the residence hall on the Faculty Residence site (198 spaces), the arts building (170 spaces) and two apartment residences on Summit and Grand (60 spaces each).

An additional 300 spaces would be created if St. Thomas added two levels to the Anderson Parking Facility at Grand and Cretin.

In our first year working on the strategic plan, it was very clear that our community is invested in our Catholic identity. Yet, for many people the Catholic identity was too often experienced as something that divided us, and not something that brought us together. Echoing the strong theme of One University, we heard a desire that our mission would bring us together with a shared purpose and vision. Our brand reflects that shared purpose.

Seeing no desire to change our mission, we focused on how to leverage that shared identity to create the university we dreamed of. The charge for the task force dedicated to Catholic-Inspired Community Engagement reflects that focus. The task force had three guiding principles:

A commitment to truth, justice and caritas (or self-giving love);

A desire to build on our strengths around social justice, global awareness, sustainability, diversity and inclusion;

And a desire to coordinate community engagement activities in order to foster a culture of service.

Many of the initiatives put forward by this task force are well underway. The Office of Mission has expanded to include not only Campus Ministry, but also an Office for Spirituality and an Office for Service and Social Justice. Within this last office is our new volunteer center that helps students find volunteering opportunities.

Campus Ministry is in the process of hiring part-time staff to support the spiritual needs of our non-Catholic students, staff and faculty. These will include a Protestant minister and a Jewish rabbi, and, hopefully an Imam.

The university will expand its community engagement efforts with a new Center for the Common Good. This center will not only expand opportunities for community engagement, but will also be the mechanism to better coordinate our engagement efforts, especially between curricular and co-curricular work. Look for more details in the coming weeks!

The Sustainable Communities Partnership was a pilot program that launched with strategic planning funds. It began by pairing up local communities seeking to expand their own efforts at sustainability with students receiving course credit. This program has now become a permanent part of our community engagement.

Lastly, we continue our process to earn the designation of an Ashoka Changemaker Campus. This designation will enhance our visibility as an institution that fosters social innovation across the university. The process to get this prestigious designation includes several steps, including a site visit in December.

We are proud of our mission, grounded in Catholic social thought, and we seek daily to enact it in how we treat each other, how we interact with our local communities, and in how we respect our resources. The work of the Catholic-Inspired Community Engagement task force has made that actualization more clear.

We, like so many others, are deeply saddened by the picture of the racist slur that was reported seen on our sidewalk last night. This is not who we are and cannot be tolerated.

We are a Catholic university committed to two fundamental principles of Catholic Social Teaching: the Dignity of the Human Person and Solidarity.

We must respect the dignity of ALL human persons. Each of us is a creation of God, and our human dignity follows from our very existence. Human dignity is not dependent on race, creed, color, gender, religion or any other dimensions by which humans might distinguish themselves, and it is not bestowed by anyone other than God, our creator. Every human life is sacred.

Our solidarity mandates that we are all part of one human family and we have mutual obligations to promote the rights and development of all peoples. We are called to be empathetic, and we cannot remain untouched by the suffering or injustice against any brother or sister anywhere on our planet, and certainly not within our own community.

We are actively investigating this incident and will take firm action based on our findings. In addition, several offices on campus and student groups are in the process of organizing forums for discussion and support and will provide announcements of these opportunities.

Please reach out to others in our community, particularly our community members of color. We must unite to ensure every person on our campus feels safe and respected.

Thank you in advance for helping us rise up and be the University of St. Thomas we aspire to be.

Father Martin M. Fleming ’66 M.A. and Kathleen M. Groh ’98 M.A. are two of the Catholic Spirit’s 2016 Leading with Faith winners honored at an August luncheon with Archbishop Bernard Hebda.

The Catholic Spirit has been bestowing this award on members of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for 15 years. This year, it named five men and two women “who work in diverse fields but share a commitment to cherishing the dignity of their employees, sharing their talents and relying on God to see them through.”

Fleming, a retired Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, is the owner of Bethany Village, and founder and chairman emeritus of Trinity Sober Homes – both of which serve men fighting addiction. Fleming, ordained in 1952, said the presence of Jesus and faith in the workplace is essential and he begins each business meeting in prayer. “Keeping Jesus in the center of everything we do gives us the extra ‘oomph’ we need,” he said.

Groh served as a lay ecclesial minister for more than 35 years before becoming the regional director for Ignatian Volunteer Corps five years ago. Groh said she believes that faith is a verb: “That means we are called to make a difference in the lives of others,” she said. During her many years of work, Groh has come to realize that “God is absolutely delighted when we drop our agenda like the Good Samaritan and tend to the needs of others.”

Both Fleming and Groh have been blessed with inspiring people along their paths of faith.“It seems that on my life’s journey at every twist and turn there have been loving family members and good friends, challenging teachers, authors and publicists, wise figures and most of all, beautiful people of faith who have supported, encouraged and prayed for me along the way,” Groh said.

Gordon Grice likes celebrating nature. He also likes sharing all the ways it could potentially kill us. As he is apt to point out, those two ideas are not mutually exclusive.

“I try to write beautifully about the darkest aspects of nature – predation, death and other delights,” Grice writes in his blog profile. “I love all the faces of nature, but my work is not for the squeamish or the sentimental.”

Grice, an instructor of English at St. Thomas since 2001, said he has combined his love of nature and writing for as long as he can remember. The pairing has resulted in articles in publications such as The New Yorker and Harper’s, as well as several books. The Red Hourglass focuses on the lives of predators; The Book of Deadly Animals explores the relationships humans have with nearly every type of animal on the planet; and The Cabinet of Curiosities assists children in their collection of the natural world.

While Grice said that writing is the most important thing to him, he emphasized that, “You can’t really take nature out of anybody’s life, whether think about it that way or not. It’s what we are.”

Dogs and spiders and gorillas, oh my!

One guiding aspect of Grice’s writing is clarifying what we understand about animals and nature. He described The Red Hourglass as being about his own adventures in nature while The Book of Deadly Animals is a research book that explores both our relationships with various animals and stories of how and when they harm us. Deadly Animals stems from his realization that our worldview in regards to animals has shifted.

“I had come across several interesting books from the ’60s that … survey the whole animal kingdom and tried to gather up objective materials about how dangerous animals were,” Grice said. “Both of those books were really well done and they were really wrong. And the reason they were wrong isn’t because the writers had failed, but because of the world they lived in. … That’s when I realized that our understanding of the environment has progressed so far that we need re-evaluate all of that information.”

For Deadly Animals. Grice interviewed scientists, researched thousands of stories about interactions with animals gone awry and includes his own experiences. One element he explores is how our perception of our relationship with a certain animal affects the actual relationship. That’s a theme he brings to the immediate forefront in Chapter One: Wolves, Dogs, and Their Kin.

“In much of the world – the parts where people have extirpated the large native predators – the dog is the most dangerous large animal except for human beings. In the United States, for example, an estimated 4.7 million dog bites occur each year,” Grice writes. “People view most of these incidents as something of a different order from, say, an attack by a crocodile or a bear. It is this very difference in perception that allows a dog to be a danger.”

On the flip side, he points out that there are plenty of animals whose danger we overestimate. “Why do spiders so often get the blame?” he writes. “Part of the answer seems to lie in arachnophobia.”

While the book is a compilation of times an animal interaction has gone wrong, sprinkled throughout are stories of Grice’s day-to-day adventures, which include animals he and his sons have kept, including tarantulas, dogs and beetles. When asked what animals he thinks are acceptable to be kept as pets, Grice admitted he didn’t think of his own as “pets,” and that only a few animals with a long evolutionary history, such as cats and dogs, should be kept as pets.

Another theme that emerges throughout Dangerous Animals is how being in close quarters with humans often puts stressors on animals in a way that can make them difficult to predict, which is why zoos are often scenes of unfortunate incidents. Grice admitted to having mixed feelings when it comes to zoos.

“Just in the past week, I’ve been to the Minnesota zoo, and I thoroughly enjoyed it,” he said. “I think, on a philosophical level, zoos are kind of indefensible. [At the end of May], because of human misbehavior, a gorilla was killed. But the other side of that is there are more gorillas because the zoos exist to protect them. It’s not as good as the wild, but because the wild is completely compromised for some species, depending on the range and habitat, zoos might be a bad answer but still the best answer.”

Grice said he learned something about every animal he studied, even the ones he was familiar with. In that line, he said that there wasn’t any animal that he wouldn’t be interested in learning more about.

He added this contingency for how best to interact with animals, though: “[Interacting with animals is] what a lot of people want that’s not very good for animals. … In some parts of India, there’s walkways with lucite – see-through walls that go over stretches of the jungle. You can walk by and maybe you’ll get to see a tiger. And whether you do or not, you can’t do anything about it. You can’t alter the tiger’s behavior, other than there being a structure there. That’s the sort of relationship I think we should have with most animals.”

Going wild in the classroom

After Cabinet of Curiosities came out into 2015, Grice wrote a children’s novel based on stories he told his children when they were younger, and is currently working on a children’s novel about Mary Shelley. He said writing for a different audience hasn’t been that difficult, because often the age categories on books don’t correlate with who is actually reading the book.

“I recently had a project where an editor said this is too scary for kids. I’m just convinced that it’s not,” Grice said. “It’s scary for parents who have a certain vision of what’s OK for kids. I know if I were 10 years old and saw a book of scary stories, I would probably be interested.”

Grice uses his writing experience in the classroom at St. Thomas, particularly in topics classes, where he has done classes on animals, monsters and is teaching Thrilling Tales of Adventure this fall. He works to find “high-interest topics” that also have literary depth.

He said, practically, his writing experience also helps him be able to relate to his students better.

“I think it’s really helpful if a student has a problem or a writing challenge or some sort, I can … say, ‘This is how I handled that when I had a similar problem,’” Grice said.

“Students respond so well to [Gordon] and appreciate that he treats them as professionals,” echoed Amy Muse, chair of the English Department. “He really shows students the lived experience of being a professional writer: investigating, drafting, revising, persevering through failures and rejections, finding fresh ways of seeing and surprising himself and readers.”

Finding fresh ways of seeing certainly lines up with Grice’s goals for his students and his writing.

“I want students to break out of barriers, and that’s what I try to do with my writing,” he said.

Much has changed throughout human history, but one constant is our affinity for music. Why is it that something with no definitive evolutionary value has managed to remain such an important focus of human life? And what does it mean that – in our Western society – we are treating music differently than it ever has been before, with distinctions between those who create and those who receive?

St. Thomas music professor Chris Kachian joined the Newsroom to talk about these topics and others, including Daniel Levitin’s 2006 book, This is Your Brain on Music, in a taped interview, which has been edited for clarity and length.

The goal of answering this question was always a top priority for the strategic plan. Our climate studies and President’s Planning Survey demonstrated that goodwill alone would not shift our culture. We needed to examine our practices, our organizational structures and our educational opportunities for faculty and staff, from the top down, in order to make significant change. The result has been the implementation of some significant changes throughout many different parts of the university.

The most visible change was the reorganization of the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion (OID) under the leadership of a full-time associate vice president. This area is housed within the Office for Mission because an inclusive culture flows from our Catholic identity.

OID serves the whole community – faculty, staff and students – as we pursue our diversity and inclusion initiatives. This year, the president significantly increased the operating budget of this office to support more robust programming. At their next event, which will place Nov. 11, Tayo Rockson will lead an interactive session on “Leadership in the Global World.”

Changes begin at the top. With financial support from the president’s office, Dr. Artika Tyner, associate vice president for diversity and inclusion, has arranged for the president’s cabinet to take the Intercultural Development Inventory to assess senior leadership’s capacity to effect change in our institution. The process includes a 30-minute confidential feedback coaching session with a professional from the external organization administering the assessment.

The OID cannot shift our culture alone; many other offices on campus are working toward a more inclusive climate. Student Diversity and Inclusion Services has enhanced their programs across the board. One new program that occurs every Friday afternoon is the Purple Bench, which provides space for the community to have discussions around uncomfortable topics that were solicited from incoming first-year students during orientation.

Student Affairs also has formed the Diversity Activities Board (DAB), a group of student leaders responsible for offering educational programs focused on diversity and inclusion. Students and staff alike encourage our whole community to participate in these events; check here for November’s programs for National Native American Heritage Month.

Faculty Development has enhanced opportunities for faculty to create a more inclusive classroom. St. Thomas now has an institutional membership to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity, which provides many online supports for both teaching and research. This year Faculty Development also launched their Inclusive Classroom Institute – a yearlong program of faculty training aimed at helping faculty gain awareness and training to promote equitable opportunities for students. So far 40 faculty members attended workshops in September and October.

More invisible have been the changes in other parts of the university. For example, Human Resources has made adjustments in the hiring process to include better training for hiring committee members. In faculty searches, one member on each hiring committee will serve as a trained advocate for fairness in the search.

The Leadership Academy also has increased its educational opportunities related to diversity, including accessibility of classroom materials for students who are differently abled. Campus Ministry is in the process of hiring a protestant minister, a Jewish rabbi and possibly an Imam to work part time with the Office of Mission and to support the spiritual well-being of all of our students.

Will these changes alone solve all of our tensions around inclusion and difference? Of course not. But hopefully we will make significant strides in shifting our culture toward living out our commitment to radical hospitality.

In a presidential election cycle that at times seemingly needed new adjectives to describe its negativity, it was an interesting time for senior Mallory Patrow to measure her peers’ political cynicism and optimism. Last year and into spring 2016 that’s exactly what she did, and her findings surprised her.

“I was shocked there wasn’t more cynicism,” the communication journalism and political science major said. “I always like to see the political system’s positives because I want to be part of it in the future, so it’s refreshing to me that not everyone is the opposite, thinking all these negative things.”

Using surveys and focus groups with students across the undergraduate class range, Patrow asked what traits they looked for in political leaders and, later, what traits they see in actual politicians. Interestingly, far more positive traits matched across those areas than negative ones.

Less consistent were measurements of how much students value their vote versus their outlook on the country’s political system as a whole (not much correlation), and in general there was a mixed bag of the outlook on politics as a system.

“[The students I studied] aren’t full-out cynics, but they’re not exactly ‘Yay, politics!’ either,” Patrow said. “Parents at this point are still the most consistently influential people on their political attitude, so if they grew up in a positive household for that they’ll have more positive views, or vice versa. Media didn’t have as large an impact; it was actually just written in a couple times. So, yes, they see all these things in the media [that are generally negative], but it may not be as influential as their parents, professors, their curriculum.”

Patrow, a Wabasha, Minnesota, native, said she hopes to see this research furthered at St. Thomas after this election cycle.

“There’s perhaps a narrative that is being projected of cynicism, and it might not be that everyone is cynical, especially at this age, but more of a narrative that everyone accepts,” Patrow said. “My research definitely didn’t show what I thought it would.”